Monday, February 18, 2013

We have ached here in the sootFor so long we forget time
Cold in us has taken root
In coming ages light won't shine

Yet, the pure ones glisteningIn the Sun's radiant gloriesGod's light was their christeningHarvested from earth's quarries
Give us light oh give us light
May it shine up-on... us
Compress us oh God of might
To reveal in us dawn's blush

The frozen comet hurtled through the bitter darkness of the Oort cloud. This vast belt of icy void orbited the far away Sun, which was a faint distant red glow. This particular comet was one of many. Tens of hundreds of thousands of frigid hulls of frozen water and dirt slowly moved through the dead silence. Cometa ached to enter the warmth of the Outer Solar System, away from the other comets. For within the true Solar system, she could melt and perhaps be a true planet, maybe even with her own moons and rings. But for now, she carried on. Silence. Vast chasms of darkness on every side, occasionally punctuated by one of her dead cousins soaring far above or below. Abysmal black pitch. Dead still. Constant unease of deep stillness. Cometa, aching to become a light and a glory, sung herself a lullaby:

"Oh that I could be a Chosen.

And not one of many Frozen!

Darkness gives me such unease.

That I could do but as I please!

I wish that my cold bonds would thaw

And release me from the Law!"

And Cometa wept a frozen tear, and hurtled on through the dead space.

Two

A thousand years later into her 34,404th orbit around the sun, Cometa pondered an enigma.
"I wonder," said she, "how beautiful would I be, if these dreary roots of Cold lost their hold on me?"
Though she knew it not, that distant red glow on the horizon of her universe had been pulling her closer and closer for over ten thousand years. Each orbit brought her marginally closer to the beating heart which pulsated light from the solar system's core. And today was the day when Cometa's dreams would come true. For she was now leaving the Outer Solar System. And a thought struck her, like a hammer striking a silver bell. She was drifting further away from her Arctic neighbours than she ever has! Glee filled her as she sailed toward the Sun, and she cackled out to her fellow comets:

"How sad you all must be,

to say goodbye to one as me!

But alas, I love you not.

May ye frozen tubs of cold glass rot."

"I shall be," thought Cometa, "the greatest planet that has ever existed. I shall have twenty-two moons and rings a thousand light-seconds long." Thus on she sailed, ever closer to yonder Star and Sun.

Made by *QAuz

Three

After another ten thousand years of slowly orbiting away through the deep glacial cold, she espied far off another comet also being gently pulled inward by the Sun. It was far smaller than she. It was a frosty white one, flecked with grey dirty snow. Many craters also speckled her face. She was old, perhaps as old as Cometa herself, though surely not as old as the Elder Comets that floated dead through space far behind.

"Ho there!" Cometa cried out to the distant comet. She spun around, surprised, and spotted Cometa, cried back "Hello there! I shall wait for you here!" And, after waiting a few hundred days, Cometa caught up with her. "Hello, my name is Cometa!" "Enchanté. My name is Stará. What are you doing here, so far away from your home?" Cometa replied "I am going to yonder star, to make myself into a light and a glory, so all the universe can behold my splendour and be exceedingly amazed." "Why," replied Stará, "That's exactly what I intend to do as well! I was hoping that the Sun could melt me, and reveal my true beauty which is hidden within. I feel that I am tremendously special and important, and others simply need to gaze upon me and they will understand. That is why I have left everything behind." Cometa then realized that Stará would be her direct competitor for the exaltation she felt was due to her, Cometa, alone. Bitter anger filled Cometa. What could she do? Suddenly a dead smile flickered onto the lips of Cometa as an ingenious plan seeped into her icy cores.

Four

Ten thousand years later, millennia after Stará had disappeared into the icy darkness behind her, Cometa felt a rise in temperature. Although it was only marginal, Cometa knew it was true. She was closer to the Sun than she thought she would ever be. The Sun! Freedom! Soft warm showers of water would pour off her! Bursts of glee shot through her and reconfirmed her plan to steal the glory.

Suddenly she saw a tiny dimly glinting grey object accelerate exponentially towards her. It zoomed right by her. "Wait!" she cried out. "What?" retorted the Grey Thing. "What are you?" she asked. "Busy. I'm measuring the average percentage of hydrogen atoms per cubic metre at regular intervals, by zoning every five kilometres from the Sun. I've been at this for far too long and I have too much time left, so I must go now. Goodbye!" "Stop! I need a friend!" cried out Cometa. "Not me, I'm far too busy and intelligent to be your friend, but if you need something to do you can count the stars one by one and then count them backwards in the exact reverse order and repeat ad infinitum until you find a friend or something more useful to do. Farewell!" And the mouth of Space quickly swallowed up the Grey thing.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

[Edit: I recently received a comment about this post. Scroll to the end to see the comment and my reply]

They don't.

Bad things don't happen to good people. There are no good people. I am not a good person. God alone is good. Everyone else has been stained by sin. Even the smallest of infants, the most tender of babes, the most innocent of girls, the most gentle of boys - they too are sin-stained.

So why are women raped? Why are children kidnapped, tortured and killed?

As the false dilemma goes, God is either non-existent or non-omnipotent (thus allowing bad things to happen), or he is evil and cruel, able to stop all wrongs but not willing.

But neither is true. God is existent, He is omnipotent, but He allows sin to happen. He allows women to be raped. He allows children to be kidnapped, and tortured, and killed. Anyone who believes in God will admit this. He allows this to happen.

But why?

For several reasons.

1. We all deserve every wrongdoing we get. We have all sinned against God - yes, the pregnant rape victim has sinned. The rapist has sinned doublefold, to be sure, but the victim too. The little children, even if they are too young to understand the moral implications of their actions, have a sinful nature within them. See the baby, crying when it wants something it can't have. As P. Washer once said, imagine that baby wanted a gold ring. It cried and reached for it. If that baby had the strength of a full grown man, it would slaughter anyone who stood between it and the ring. Adult sin is just - normally - less external. We are not good.

You want to deny this.

But it is true that people are inherently evil, and scientifically demonstrable. Go ahead and read one of oldest songs in existence - the book of Psalms. Read Psalm 14. Read Romans 3. Go and research "Milgram's Electric Shock Experiment," or Jerry Berger's replication thereof, or the Stanford prison experiment. People require very little prodding, or none at all, to express evil. It seems a very natural thing.

2. God is not only love. He is also justice.

Everyone will receive justice. Some will receive it through Christ, and some through their own non-god bodies. He allows some of this justice to occur here on the earth. He allows most of it to occur after our deaths. It will come.

3. God's paths are unsearchable

Do not ignore the first two reasons. They in themselves answer the question, though not wholly. The third reason is "I do not fully know. No man, save Christ, truly knows the why behind different scenarios." Some rape victims come to know Christ through their trauma. Some kidnapped children will grow up to be embittered with a profound loathing of Jesus Christ. Either way, God's overarching plan takes all this into account. Jesus said, "no bird dies, and no hair falls from your head, unless God has known it before time began." It is all planned out.

You probably don't like these answers. You want me to say that every rape victim will be rewarded in Heaven, or God loves them more than normal people. But the truth is, God did not commit the crime. He allowed a guilty person to be punished (immorally) by a more guilty person. At the end of the day, unless grace is received through Christ, both will perish.

Imagine a world where God is both good, and just, and where people were not evil - and nothing bad happened. A world of perfection and peace, laughter and mystery, beauty and science, truth and holiness - a world that reflects the nature of Jesus Christ.

God already made that world. Then we, humans, ruined it. We are living in a world that we have destroyed. God will again make that world. Then we, humans will not ruin it. Sin will be thrown into the maws of Hell, where the just wrath of God abides. And the fire of Jesus Christ shall wax anew eternally.

[Edit]

I recently received a comment from someone, who says they know me in person. That may be so. Here is their comment:

"Erick, I know who you are, and it makes me sick to know that you actually believe this. Believing that God could ever intend for a woman to be raped requires one to override empathy, lose their moral bearings and accept evil as divine will. And as a rape survivor, I find this to be all the more offensive. I’m very sorry to have found this horrible outlet of yours.

Forgive me, I am an atheist and no expert when it comes to the ins-and-outs of your religion, but what you have written here has done more harm to my perception of Christianity and Christians than all its critics combined. This evil and misogynistic ideas post of yours needs to be debunked for what it really is: a rationalization of evil, an attack on women, and a slandering of the God of love, justice and mercy whom I’ve heard many good Christians follow.

Help me understand: in person you seem like a perfectly normal guy, not to mention highly academic. Where the hell did this testimony to your sociopathology come from?"

Unfortunately, this person left me no ability to reply to them, as they left no contact information. I am sorry for this, and I would much prefer to have this conversation with you in private. Whoever you are, I am sorry you feel this way. If you truly do know me, then come and approach me and we can have this conversation.

You say you are an atheist, and atheists say that they like truth. You state that "I believe that God intends for a woman to be raped."

I never said that. I said that God allows women to be raped. God hates rape. God hates murder. God hates the rapist and the murderer (Psalm 5:5). I never said that God wishes, desires, plans for the murder, abduction, sexual torment and/or rape of countless tens of thousands of women all of the world. I hate rape. God does not condone rape, he condemns it.

Yet we have two facts: women are raped, and God exists. So, why does God allow it? I said two things

1) I think it's because we're all fallen creatures, and we've all done bad things and we all deserve punishment - I am a perfect example. I am not as gentle as I should be, not as loving as I could be, I am frequently rude and ignorant and harsh and severe. I have broken an infinitely big law, therefore I deserve God's infinite wrath.

2) I don't know.

You say I rationalize evil. I do not rationalize evil. You know those rapists that raped that women to death in India on a bus for hours and hours? That pisses me the fuck right off. And God fucking hates that as well. I hate evil. I condemn all evil.

You say this post is an attack on women. How so? Why wouldn't you say it's also an "attack on children?" since I mention them as well? Because this is not so. I honour and respect women - I believe the male-dominated church of today is not in line with the Biblical standard. I believe that women have a much higher place in the church than the realize, perfectly equal in level with men. I am all for women.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Preamble: I am not addressing all of you when I say “missionary.”
Many of you come to foreign cultures in humility, realizing that Western
civilization is no less primitive than any other, although it has fringe
benefits. Many of you understand that Jesus will be worshipped in every tongue
by every tribe – that is, in every different culture. Many of you have the
heart of Jesus and offer grace, not legalism and condemnation. Put down this
letter now – you are doing a fine job. I speak to the missionaries who lived in
Ancient Rome or live now in Modern Venezuela – all over the earth in every
time. The men who are concentrated on “collecting souls,” not glorifying Christ
through love and gentleness.

Dear colonizing
missionaries,

I must confess, I am pissed off.
I find it hard not to hate you sometimes – may God help me. I would swear were
I to speak to you in real life. You, oh British missionaries to Hawaii, offered
to natives not peace, but condemnation. Woe to you! You, oh French missionaries
to the Five Nations of Canada, did not care for their culture, but for your
false religion alone. You, oh Spanish missionaries to Peru, offered not the loving
pierced hand of Jesus, but the iron fist of legalism. You, oh men who held up
the name of Christ as a pretention, as a symbol, but your black hearts were
just as stained with sin as any other man. Woe to you! Cursed be the man who
brings disgrace to the name of Christ by killing natives. By punishing them. By
oppressing them. By making them afraid. Did you not realize that men in the
future would look back in utter disdain for a Christ you did not preach? I am filled with rage.

You built your cathedrals on top
of pagan temples, you condemned hula-hoop dancing, you bound men down with
European morals, you forced them to learn an angry foreign tongue, you made
them farm and make hay-bales, you kidnapped their children to “re-education schools,”
you ravaged their lands, you flaunted yourself, you raped their women, you
despised their culture, you hated their skin-colour. Woe to you! You claim to
be religious, but true religion, says God, is helping the widow and the orphan, and being unstained from the world!
But you slaughtered the husband, raped his widow to death, kidnapped her
orphan, and showed your evil worldly heart. In the name of Anglican and Puritan
and Protestant and Catholic and Orthodox values, you ignored Christ’s sacrifice
and bound them with the law of Moses. Woe
to you! Says Christ, teachers of the
law, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You
yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.

You preached a false gospel, you
trampled on Christ’s sacrifice, you broke every law of God, you did not remove
the plank from your own eye, you lived to please man, you sat down at the head
table, you exalted yourself, you did not become a Jew for the Jew or Gentile
for the Gentile, you considered yourself better than others, you treated others
as you would not want to be treated, ad
nauseum. How do you think you shall escape the fires of Hell? Jesus saved
his most bitter rage for the most religious of hypocrites. And you are such a
man. You are a hypocrite. Repent from your wicked ways, perhaps the light of
Christ will shine in your heart still. It is truly a wonder and astonishment
that anyone at all was actually brought to Christ through your cruelty. I am
sickened.